AIM: Multiethnic Kosovo Without Serbs, Romanies, Muslims...

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Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 13:13:01 +0200 (EET)
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Subject: AIM: Multiethnic Kosovo Without Serbs, Romanies, Muslims...

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Multiethnic Kosovo Without Serbs, Romanies, Muslims...



aim\pri\trae\rm
Multiethnic Kosovo Without Serbs, Romanies, Muslims...
AIM Pristina, 24 October, 1999

Apparently an ordinary apartment building in a suburb of Pristina is
hiding a secret. For more than three months, eight Serb families are
living there in complete isolation for fear that somebody would hurt
them just because they are not Albanians. None of the inhabitants of
this building, children of different age inclusive, dares go out even
to the nearby market to buy bread or milk. The grown-ups spend most of
the day in their apartments, and the children at the entrance halls
which are protected by metal nets. If it had not been for the patrol
of KFOR stationed in one of the apartments and the soldiers who do all
the necessary shopping, probably all these people would have been
thrown out a long time ago and forced to leave their homes and set out
into the unknown. "It is the hardest for the children", says a woman
who asked that her name not be mentioned. "Not only because they don't
have what they need of the food and entertainment, but because they
can't go to school", she explains. Except for KFOR soldiers and
occasionally members of UN police, nobody from civilian
administration, humanitarian organisations, journalists, visited these
prisoners in their own apartments.

Thousands of people in Kosovo share the destiny of these people. It is
even mnore difficult for them when they hear that practically every
day some of the members of their ethnic group have been killed.
According to the data of the office of the Centre for Peace and
Tolerance and the People's Church Committee, since the entrance of
NATO-KFOR troops on 12 June, about 350 murders of non-Albanians were
registered, who were not only shot, but also burnt down in their
houses, stoned, beaten up... About 500 persons, mostly Serbs, have
been proclaimed disappeared and their destiny is still a mystery. The
Albanians are now living in about 30 to 35 thousand of their
apartments and houses, and their previous owners were often thrown out
by attacks, blackmail, threats and other forms of pressure. According
to the knowledge of these two sources, many of them did not manage to
take along even the absolutely necessary personal belongings. Several
thousand men, women and children, among whom there are many ailing,
starving and feeble live locked up in their homes in fear of violence.
At the Centre for Peace and Tolerance they claim that there are also
criminals in Kosovo who have come from Albania in order to get hold of
apartments, but primarily to benefit by robbery. According to the same
source about 200 people, mostly Serbs but also an enormous number of
Romanies were forced to seek refuge or leave Kosovo altogether.

The Serbs, Romanies and Bosniacs who have sought refuge in isolated
and impoverished Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic are living in collective
centres and depend on other people's aid, and Europe is refusing to
let them in under the pretext  that "conditions due to which
inhabitants of Kosovo were offered exile have ceased to exist". Among
Serb analysts in Kosovo it is believed that more resolute seeking of a
solution for this problem would for KFOR mean opening of a conflict
with their war allies - Kosovo Albanians and creation of an unfriendly
environment for the soldiers whose safety is one of their priorities.
The assessment of representatives of international military forces
that the atmospere in Kosovo has significantly improved because the
number of murders has gone down from 30 registered in the first weeks
after the entrance of international military forces to last week's
six, offers no comfort to the remaining non-Albanians. The reason for
reduction of the number of incidents can in fact be sought in the fact
that there are less and less mixed environments in Kosovo. On the
other hand, representatives of UNMIK civilian administration stick to
their declarative commitment to "building of a multiethnic, democratic
society and institutions in Kosovo" and keep saying that "a long time
will be needed for building peace and democracy". Kosovo Serbs, Turks
and Romanies while sitting in their homes afraid of what the next day
will bring them - believe less and less...

Representatives of the Serbs in Kouchner's Transitional Council of
Kosovo which is expected to develop into some kind of an executive
authority and even government, submitted resignations as a sign of
disapproval and protest against what is happening in Kosovo. After
numerous complaints while they still participated in the work of this
body, it seems that the decisive event was formation of the Protective
Corps of Kosovo more than 70 per cent of which are former members of
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Symbolically, by withdrawing, the Serbs
have left Kouchner's administration without a single argument with
which they corroborated to the world public that the idea of
multiethnic Kosovo will after all come true.

As a result of such a situation, in places where there still are
non-Albanians, especially Serbs, completely isolated ethnically pure
environments have been established which they most frequently call
enclaves. That is where those banished from cities or villages also
live, and they are guarded by KFOR units. Gracanica, Kosovska
Kamenica, northern part of Mitrovica, are examples of such
environments. It is much worse in Gorazdevac, but especially in
Orahovac where about 4,500 Serbs and Romanies live in some kind of
ghetto, surrounded by barbed wire in the area which covers a single
street with the church and village cafe. Even food and drugs are
brought to them by convoys with military escorts. In places such as
Kosovo Polje or Obilic where the population is still mixed, every day
there are attacks against non-Albanians, abuses and even murders and
homes set on fire primarily of the Serbs and the Romanies, but also of
the Bosniacs and Goranians. New KFOR commander, German general Klaus
Rheinhardt could not resist publicly expressing his wrath when after
several public appeals that the violence stop, a body of an elderly
woman who had been beaten to death was found in a burnt down house in
Obilic. His call to Kosovo Serbs who had fled to return to their
homes, just a few days after he had taken over command of KFOR units,
could be a sign of better treatment of non-Albanians than it had been
under command of his predecessor, British general Mike Jackson.

Violence continues, though. In Pec where there are no more Serbs and
Montenegrins, now the Bosniacs are the targets of attacks because
their mother tongue is also Serbian. Head of civilian administration
Bernard Kouchner, recently visited this area where a Bosniac was
killed in the course of the past fortnight, and a few were beaten up
just because they are of different ethnic origin. The recent case of
murder of a UNMIK worker in Pristina who was a Bulgarian by origin and
who lost his life just because he spoke in the street in his mother
tongue which is similar to Serbian may be the best illustration of
what is currently happening in Kosovo. Some people are trying to throw
the hot potato into the lap of UNMIK reminding that the murdered
Valerij Krumov had just arrived from the airport without an identity
card or a uniform. In other words, he was in civilian clothes...

However, it is not only the people that are targets of the attacks of
the Albanians who think that by violence against non-Albanians they
are working for the benefit of their community. According to the
Centre for Peace and Tolerance, more than 70 Orthodox churches in
Kosovo have been destroyed since the arrival of KFOR. Many of them
have been set on fire and then torn down to their foundations with
dynamite. Among them are the Church of Ascension of the Mother of God
built in 1315 in Musutist, St. Marko monastery built in 1467 in Korisa
(Prizren) and other religious buildings of priceless historical and
artistic value... Hieromonach Sava Janjic who has moved from Decani to
Gracanica monastery where KFOR soldiers are accommodated, believes
that the main objective of this violence is "eradication of Serb
spirital roots in Kosovo". Of course there are many of those who are
trying to explain everything that is happening as a boomerang of
violence and revenge for the crimes committed against Kosovo Albanians
during the two-and-a-half month long war. However, it seems to be just
a way to fall into the trap of justifying violence with - violence.

AIM Pristina

#Milan Jokic

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